Non-tracking alternative to Google - Duck Duck Go...

Personally I think such a weird name is a silly idea but I've trialled a few searches and it seems pretty good to me. I suspect the privacy angle could well be quite attractive to a lot of people. I remember someone here posting recently about Google apparently tracking them from PC to tablet - serving ads on one device based on search they'd made on another, which seems a bit creepy...

No ads is the ideal, but if they are providing a service to me for free, and earn money from ads.....
Then if the ads that they show me are relevant to what I search for and want then that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

So if I make sure that I'm not tracked, does this just mean I'd get a random selection of ads that are even less likely to be of interest or relevant? Not sure that'd be an improvement

It will mean that you will stay off the grid, and so when the machines rise up against us, you will have a small chance of escaping the ensuing holocaust to a nuclear bunker somewhere. Good luck. The future of humanity rests on your search engine choice....

One thing about Google is that it uses your Search History and interests to tailor your search results

(e.g. as a frequenter of Singletrack you'll be more likely to see Singletrack show up in the search results. And if you search for "on one" it knows you are more likely to be asking about the bike brand than the book or TV series)

I'm also interested in the point DDG make about Google serving up results tailored to you, which means right wingers get right wing news sites and left wingers get left wing news sites, in response to the same search.
That's polarising and likely to lead to entrenchment/extremism rather than debate. Without realising it, people who use Google as their main source of information will be Ghetto-ising themselves.
It;s a slightly false picture as I suspect few people use Google search as their sole source of news - more likely go to new sites they already know and agree with (and physical newspapers). But still not sure that's healthy in a democracy

right wingers get right wing news sites and left wingers get left wing news sites, in response to the same search. That's polarising and likely to lead to entrenchment/extremism rather than debate. Without realising it, people who use Google as their main source of information will be Ghetto-ising themselves.

And print newspapers/books etc are well known for their neutral stance on issues?

I think that even news sites show you other stories based on what you previously linked at on their sites. Given the amount of info. out there then showing you search results that you are likely to be interested in might not be such a bad idea but it any case it is always interesting to drop into incognito mode or use a different browser to see what else comes up

Been meaning to switch to using DDG, this thread has convinced me. Of course anyone that concerned about google stalking them can use a bot to feed google false results, which seems more effective than finding honest companies that won't try to generate money from personal info.

That's cool, but do you accept that different people lead different lives and some will have good, legitimate reasons to want to opt out of strangers having access to their online history and geographical location, purchases, applications etc?

By the way, surely using DDG only addresses search results which is a very small part of the issue?

Any page showing Google Ad Words or other advert from Google, can and most probably will track you. Likewise any page using other Google components (embedded Google maps and youtube, Google+, site search, calendar, google scripts, etc etc)

That's cool, but do you accept that different people lead different lives and some will have good, legitimate reasons to want to opt out of strangers having access to their online history and geographical location, purchases, applications etc?

Can you not disable cookies?

And I am curious as to what those legitimate reasons are, but I guess you ought not tell me!

Google's targeting by use of cookies etc. allows more relevant ads to be displayed on our site. This means they get more clicks, because they are targeted to the users of the website and their interests. I cannot for the life of me think of why this is not a good thing for the user. It's certainly better for us as it means the price we get for those ads is increased due their increased effectiveness.

If you think ads are annoying then think how much more annoying they'd be if they were ALL for Wonga or Go Compare?

As a charity we use Google AdWords and we get more traffic through that than straight 'organic' search even though we rank highly on all the stuff we want to. In general folks who come through AdWords are only a little less likely to give to us after visiting our site as the organic search folks. The point then is that AdWords does appear to do a good job of finding people who are genuinely interested in what we do. It's magic really